Kim Björkegren in Louisville/Off-Season Answers and Questions
Today served as part 2 of Kim Björkegren’s introduction to Louisville. Coach Kim arrived in Louisville via Frankfurt, Germany where he was sorting out his final visa issues. I’m not sure he has slept much, if at all since arriving in Louisville, but you couldn’t tell that from his demeanor or his hair. Jeff Greer commented to me that he wanted the name of Kim’s barber, as his hair looked perfectly coifed for someone who had been going non-stop for the last 20 hours or so. Here are some answers that Coach Kim supplied to the local media:
He “almost promised” that Racing will score more goals in 2022. Racing scored a nearly league worst .9 goals/match last season. That’s half the problem sorted then. Racing conceded a league high 1.7 goals per match last season too. Very few managers come into a new job and talk about locking down the defense or “parking the bus”, but I hope that the goals conceded number improves as well. As an aside, I can’t be the only one who appreciates a lock-down defensive performance on the pitch, right? I know that the so-called “neutrals” prefer a 4-3 match over a 1-0 match, but my resolution for this year is to ignore all other fans but Racing supporters. I frankly don’t care about their teams and if Racing win all of their matches 1-0, I won’t complain. As always, scoring guarantees you nothing, but a clean sheet guarantees you a point.
The goal will be to attack with more players and press higher up the pitch. Where has we heard this before? It’s interesting that Racing’s alleged philosophy last season didn’t translate onto the game film to Kim’s eyes (he said he watched all of last season’s matches already). He did offer a preliminary solution to this, and that was to increase the team’s fitness to be able to press for 90 minutes. In attack the plan is to have more players in the box. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but we’ll see if this season’s group of players get the message.
He tentatively set the top 6 as a goal. I think that is the bare minimum for any team in the league, so I expected nothing less.
He told me that he had been somewhat involved in the roster building so far this season. More on this later.
In summary, I think that if anyone had questions about playing style that those have been answered. I still have a few more questions that it’s not fair for a new coach to answer, so I will list them out here and hope we have our answers sooner vs. later.
What is Racing doing about international players during this current transfer window?
Racing has international spots open for players. I believe there are 3 spots open (Yuki’s spot, a spot from Chicago from Yuki’s trade in 2022, and an extra spot allocated to all teams in 2022.) Racing is not only competing against other NWSL teams for these players but is competing with the top teams in Europe. The European winter transfer window is open until January 28th and the top European teams have been busy. At the time of writing this, there have been 76 transfers in Europe’s top 5 leagues. Are Racing in the mix for players like Rafaelle Souza, who attended college at Mississippi and played for the Houston Dash or Sofia Jakobsson who just went to the San Diego Wave? Last year Salmon, Bonner, and Nadim all came in after the season started. Is that the plan for this year as well? LouCity has been pretty busy, so one might wonder if that that been a detriment to Racing’s recruitment simply through divided focus.
Will Racing’s top draftees sign?
Kirsten Davis is the only college draftee to recently sign, and she was a 2021 draftee. I don’t have any reason to think that the top draftees won’t be at camp in a few weeks, but as we saw with Mia Fishel, a draft pick is not a guarantee. I would like to see Parker Goins, Jaelin Howell, Savanah DeMelo and Charmé Morgan signed sooner vs. later.
Will anyone make the team from the open tryouts?
My guess is that the answer is yes, but I hope to have a little more clarity on this next week.
Will Soccer Holdings replace Brad Estes before the seasons start?
I honestly have no read on this. As with most positions of this caliber, the general public is left in the dark on the recruitment process until someone is named. If you’re a gambler, you might put your money on Soccer Holdings hiring “John Somebody”. If anyone get tired of my harping on this issue, I will be happy to apologize when proven wrong.
Will Racing have a local TV contract for 2022?
I feel like this is an area where Brad Estes will truly be missed. I don’t know if he would have gotten this done in 2022, but his absence doesn’t make me feel good about the prospects of this since “interim president” James O’Connor now has more off the field duties to go with his on the field ones. A local TV contract is vital for growth as long as streaming is the main source of viewing for fans not in attendance.
Will there be a new away kit?
I feel like the answer here will be “yes”, but the true test is whether it will be primarily white. I am hoping for a light lavender or mint green base. Leeds 3rd kit this year is a good template.
I hope that most of these questions will be answered in the coming weeks.
